Deadline

by Craig McLay

  -26-

  They combed through the wreckage for another half hour, but didn’t find anything else that might have been connected to the Knights. Colin found what appeared to be a closet in the back with some empty food containers and a torn overcoat, which led them to believe that the place had probably been used intermittently as a shelter for homeless people or hitchhikers. Janice took a couple of hundred photos of anything that looked interesting, transferring them instantly onto a memory stick.

  “That way, even if I drop the camera in that well, the pictures are still safe,” she said.

  “Good thing,” Colin agreed. “Because if you did drop it in that well, I don’t think either of us would be reaching in there to get it.”

  They were both starving on the way home and stopped in to a pub for something to eat. It was just another chain faux-Irish place, but Colin didn’t care. He was just happy to be out of the dark basement. His mind kept flashing back to the grate over the floor and all of the horrible things that might have happened there. It took three large gulps of his first beer before the feeling started to go away.

  “I still can’t believe we found it!” Janice said, paging through the photos as they waited for their food.

  Colin wasn’t feeling quite the same vibrating sense of excitement. Having opened a locker door on Terrence Devane’s severed head and a shipping box on Shalene Nakogee’s hand, he had more personal experience of what the Knights were capable of than Janice did, and it filled him with a creeping sense of unease. These guys were out there somewhere. Not a thousand years ago and a million miles away, but right here and now.

  Added to that was the fact that Janice was making real progress with her investigation and, so far, he had diddly squat.

  “I wonder how many of them there are,” Colin mused. “It could just be one guy, but I get the feeling it’s bigger than that.”

  Janice put the camera down. “Were you able to find out anything more from the cops?”

  Colin shook his head. “I think they’ve seen enough for me for the moment. I did stop by security because I got a tip that Devane was involved in some sort of incident at the auto repair bay. Whatever it was, it was enough to get him kicked out of school. Security had the record of the file in the computer, but the file itself had vanished.”

  Their food arrived. Janice had ordered a BBQ chicken wrap and Colin a club sandwich. Neither of those things were exactly a staple of Irish cuisine, but it was food, and they were both hungry.

  “That’s weird,” Janice said after swallowing her first bite. “What do you think happened?”

  “I think Ludnick pulled it,” Colin said, chewing. “But I don’t know why. Yet.”

  “Are you gonna try again?”

  Colin shook his head. “No. I’m sure that file is shredded or ashes by now. And Ludnick’s probably found someone on staff eager or easily intimidated enough to delete the computer file reference for him. Security’s a dead end at this stage.”

  “So what’s next?”

  Colin smiled. “Look at you, Miss Hot-On-The-Trail!”

  Janice laughed. “Sorry. I’ve just never been right about something like this before! It’s like in university when you sit down to write a thesis paper, only about a thousand people have had the same idea before you or it’s a dead end because there’s nothing to back it up. This is actually happening!”

  “Well, don’t worry. My investigation is not going to start and stop with the estimable—and when I say that I mean in girth only—Jerome Ludnick.”

  “You really don’t like him,” Janice said. “Or Devries, either. You do an excellent job of being balanced in your stories, but I can tell.”

  “I don’t like a lot of people,” Colin said. “It’s an occupational hazard. The more you find out about certain people, the less harmless they seem. Especially when you put them in positions of real responsibility.”

  Janice stopped chewing for a moment. “Do you think we should tell the cops about that basement?”

  Colin thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. “No. It’s been more or less open to the elements now for seven years at least. Any trace forensic evidence they might find in there will be gone or useless. It look like it’s been used by everyone from teen partiers to homeless people.”

  Janice let out a sigh of relief. He could tell that was the answer she was hoping for, even if it was one he wasn’t 100 per cent sure about himself. What if the cops could find something useful in there that led them to a suspect?

  “CJ told me that you tried to do a story on Devane, but Hal pulled it,” Janice said. “Something to do with it possibly interfering with a police investigation.”

  “If there had actually been a police investigation, that might have been true,” Colin said, giving her a précis version of the events that had led to his opening the package and placing his call to Detective George Betts.

  “Wow,” Janice said after he was finished. “So Devries told Hal to pull the story. Was that why you tried to get his Merc towed?“

  “It was definitely a contributing factor,” Colin allowed.

  “You don’t like Hal that much, either.”

  “If I gave him any thought I probably wouldn’t.”

  Janice laughed. “That’s Casablanca! You just lifted an unattributed quote from Rick Blaine.”

  Colin smiled. “True. You just caught me in a breach of journalistic ethics.”

  “Is there anyone you don’t dislike?”

  “Well, so far Miss Yu, we seem to be getting along just fine.”

  “But would you say it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

  Colin raised his glass and they clinked. “Here’s looking at you, Yu.”

  The two of them took a swallow of beer. “Maybe you should just stick to quoting other sources,” Janice advised.

  “Noted.”

  -27-

  Colin arrived in the newsroom the next morning to find out if there had been any updates in the police investigation.

  The internet access in his apartment was spotty at best and the public terminals in the college library were always crowded, particularly right before the start of classes.

  “Hey, I remember you!” CJ said when Colin worked in. “Didn’t you used to work here?”

  Colin sat down and logged in to one of the terminals. “Only if Photoshopping Devries’s head onto the body of an orangutan counts as working.”

  Colin quickly checked the local and major news sites. There were no updates. The discovery of the two bodies had been overshadowed nationally by another shooting rampage, this one at a shopping mall in Edmonton. The perpetrator was a 14-year-old who had taken his father’s rifle to the food court to get revenge on the kids who bullied him at high school. Three of those kids were now dead and two were in hospital with critical injuries. Liberal pundits were using it as a platform to hammer the government for scrapping the national gun registry. Conservative pundits were claiming that the gun registry had nothing to do with it and now was not the time to re-open that debate. Same old, same old. In a few days they would all get back to blaming Europe for dragging the economy into the toilet and things would get back to normal.

  Devane had been officially named as the second victim, but there was still no mention of the symbol or, Colin was relieved to see, the Knights of the Holy Thorn. That meant their exclusive was still alive to fight another day, and Colin had an idea where he was going to start with his half of the investigation.

  He got up to head back out of the room and was intercepted by Watterson on his way in.

  “Colin!” Watterson exclaimed, looking strangely relieved. “There you are! Look, Seth hasn’t come in and I can’t get a hold of him. I need you to sit down with CJ to start putting next week’s edition together—”

  Colin steered himself around Watterson and didn’t stop moving. “Sorry, chief. I believe there’s a women’s volleyball game in Kingston I have to cover.”

  “Colin,
wait!” Watterson reached out a hand to try to slow Colin down, but Colin avoided it and shot out the door. “Shit.” He looked at CJ. “Well, CJ, looks like you’re acting editor for the moment.”

  “Great,” CJ said without enthusiasm. “So what do you wanna run on the front page? I’m guessing Seth hasn’t turned in his story on the murders yet, so you get to choose between a piece on the new playground equipment in the ECE centre or a story about Devries suing the company that installed his faulty penile implant that Colin filed as a joke.”

  Watterson sagged. There were days when he viewed the spectre of looming unemployment as more of a blessing than a curse. Today, he was sure, was going to be one of them.

  -28-

  The tech wing was the located at the far southern end of the secondary access road next to a large circular reflecting pool that, due to contractor issues, did not actually have any water in it and therefore didn’t reflect anything more than several thousand pigeon droppings.

  The front of the building was designed to look like some sort of glass amphitheatre, beckoning students toward a glorious future of leaky ceilings and a heating system that turned some rooms into ovens and others into walk-in freezers. There were so many technical problems with it, in fact, that even the name ‘Technology Building’ had become a running joke amongst those required to study there.

  It housed the engineering and robotics programs that the college was using to hype its image as a centre of cutting-edge learning, as well as the more pedestrian apprenticeship and trades programs that, whether Devries liked it or not, were the school’s bread and butter. Westhill had started out as a small trades academy for kids looking to become mechanics, plumbers and electricians, many of whom still made up the bulk of yearly admissions. Since Devries had taken the helm, however, the school had actively tried to shed that image, promoting itself as the happening brain hive of Silicon Valley North. Like many image transformations, it involved more wishful thinking than practical change.

  Colin cut around to the back of the building. This was where most of the trades were located, hidden away like a dark secret next to the shipping and receiving area. Colin went in through a side door and found his way to the faculty offices, where he found Paolo Ronda sitting with his feet up on a desk munching on a breakfast bagel. Paolo was an enormous man in his mid-thirties who was on part-time contract as an instructor in the automotive repair program. He ran his own garage in town with his brother-in-law, but Colin knew that was up in the air because Paolo’s business partner and sister were in the process of getting divorced. Paolo had done some discount repair work on Colin’s car the semester before when it had developed a strange grinding noise that turned out to be a loose bearing. Paolo had done the work for a fraction of what it would have cost at another garage. He was, as far as Colin could tell, an honest mechanic, which was probably one of the reasons he was in danger of going out of business.

  “Hey Paolo,” Colin said.

  “Hey Colin,” Paolo said through a mouth of what looked like cream cheese. “How’s the car runnin’?”

  “Great,” Colin said. “How’s the repair business?”

  “Not great,” Paolo said. “My brother-in-law, or I should say, my former brother-in-law, shacked up with some dental hygienist out in Oakville. I’m tryin’ to see if I can keep the place runnin’ myself, but it don’t look good.”

  “That sucks,” Colin said. “Look, I stopped by to see if you might be able to answer a question for me.”

  Paolo shrugged and took another bite. “Shoot.”

  “What do you know about a guy named Terrence Devane?” Colin asked. “I heard he was involved in some sort of incident out in the repair bay back in February and got kicked out of school. Do you know what happened?”

  Paolo stopped chewing immediately. When he spoke, he tried a little too hard to sound nonchalant. “Nothin’.”

  “Come on, man,” Colin said. “You must have heard something about it.”

  Paolo looked nervously towards the door. “Look, Colin, my shop’s about to close. I need this job, okay?”

  “Then who?”

  Paolo chewed for a minute before answering. “Try Keith. He’s about to retire. His wife’s sick. He doesn’t give a shit.”

  Colin nodded. What the hell was going on that this guy was afraid of losing his job over it? “And where might I find Keith?”

  Paolo stabbed a thumb toward the back. “He’s teaching a class in the repair bay right now. Should be done any time.”

  “Thanks,” Colin said, turning to leave.

  “Just don’t tell him I told you,” Paolo said, going back to his bagel. “Don’t tell nobody.”

  -29-

  The man who called himself C-Note banged on the door and rang the doorbell for the fifth time.

  C-Note, whose real name was Charles North, had five convictions for possession, one trafficking charge that had been dismissed because it took too long to get to trial, three convictions for possession of stolen property, two minor assault convictions and one conviction for aggravated sexual assault. He considered the last one to be a joke. It had brought by a crack whore who was trying to shake him down for some free merchandise when the cops showed up unexpectedly. He had spent five of the last ten years in the Kingston Penitentiary.

  He was not a man who liked to be kept waiting.

  He had missed the initial pickup date because the shipment had been late coming across the border. Now he was here to get his money and Seth was nowhere to be seen. He had tried calling, texting and even dropping by the college, but nobody had seen the idiot anywhere.

  North looked at his watch. He was supposed to have been in St. Catharines an hour ago. The guys who were waiting for him enjoyed waiting even less than he did. The shipment was parked out front in the trunk of his car.

  North glanced around nervously. He was standing at Seth’s back door. The back of Seth’s unit faced a shallow ravine with parkland on the other side. There was no one who could really see him standing here, but he still felt exposed.

  Fuck this, he thought. He knew where Seth kept the money. He would let himself in and find it himself. If Seth had any complaints, he could forward them in writing to the legal firm of Fuck You & Get Lost.

  North considered using the butt of his 9 mm to smash the glass in the upper half of the door frame, but, in a rare moment of advanced decision-making, decided to try the handle first. It turned easily and the door swung open.

  What a putz, North thought. He’s got over a hundred grand stashed upstairs and doesn’t even bother to lock the door.

  It occurred to him then that perhaps the door was unlocked for some other reason. The thought made him nervous and he removed the 9 mm from his pocket anyway. He knew that Seth had a gun, but he also knew that Seth had never fired it. Had probably never even used it. Still, it would be just his luck to get shot with the damn thing sneaking into the house.

  “Seth?” he said, closing the door behind him. “It’s me! Where the hell are you?”

  North moved down the hall towards the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. He was getting the same creeping feeling in his guts he had gotten the last two times he had been arrested. Part of him wanted to just turn around and head right back out the front door. The more responsible part of him knew that it would be an extremely bad idea to show up at his next destination without the money he was supposed to collect.

  “Seth?” he said, louder. “Come on, man! Where the he—”

  He rounded the corner of the kitchen. Something large and blue was attached to the wall. It took him a moment to realize that it was a body. The body was stripped naked and attached to the wall crucifixion-style by what looked to be hundreds of hypodermic needles. A cross inside some sort of circle was painted in blood overhead.

  North gagged and almost threw up. He had seen dead bodies before, but never like this. The body on the wall was Seth. His first thought was that whoever had killed him was obviously trying to send a messa
ge. It had to be the rival gang that had been trying to move in on this territory for the last couple of months. They had started out with a few grow ops in the west end and were looking to expand. Their leader was a 17-year-old firebug who had burned down three houses belonging to North’s other distributors, two of which still had people in them when they went up.

  His second thought was that they might still be here. He decided that he would be leaving without the money after all.

  -30-

  Students were shuffling out of the repair bay as Colin walked in.

  The repair bays were just two large storage rooms that had been converted by installing a couple of power lifts and garage doors that could be opened to the outside to allow the vehicles to move in and out. Students generally worked on junkers, sometimes doing some free work on vehicles belonging to faculty or other students. An idea had been floated a few years back to turn the facility into a kind of teaching for-profit enterprise where the public could have work done, but Devries’s distaste for the idea and the prohibitive cost of liability insurance had put the kibosh on that.

  Colin spotted a guy in his late fifties or early sixties washing his hands at a rusty metal sink on the far side of the room. He was wearing blue overalls stained with black oil streaks and talking to a student who was carrying a large red toolbox in one hand. Colin waited until the conversation ended before he approached.

  “Hi, are you Keith?”

  The older man turned to look at Colin. He had brush-cut hair that showed the dome of his head where he was balding on top. Although his overalls were stained, Colin noticed that they appeared to have been ironed. When he spoke, his voice was rough and rumbling, like so many of the engines with which he spent his time.

  “Yep,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Colin Mitchell,” Colin said, sticking out his hand. “I’m a reporter with the school newspaper.”

  Colin was used to people being suspicious of him. As soon as you told anyone that you worked for a newspaper, even a college newspaper, they immediately became defensive and self-conscious. Some of them clammed up altogether. This guy did none of that. Much to Colin’s surprise, he smiled and shook Colin’s hand firmly.